Envy, vengeance, redemption — those elements condense like a noxious fog in “Groundswell,” the compact, provocative thriller now onstage at the Old Globe Theatre.

The actual fog that socks in the setting of Ian Bruce’s play — a lonely guesthouse on a remote coast of South Africa — remains unseen. But the play does plenty to convey its sense of oppression, mirrored in the way the three characters seem trapped by the past and their inability to see a way through to some resolution.

Director Kyle Donnelly dials up the piece’s tension at a steady tempo, aided by a committed cast that makes manifest the complex frictions among this trio. The intimacy of the arena-style White Theatre also magnifies an unsettling feel of confinement that ignites into open conflict as the 90-minute, one-act show progresses.

The unwitting flash point is Thami (Owiso Odera), who serves as the place’s caretaker. He has a wife and children back in the city; although the end of the nation’s shameful policy of racial apartheid restored rights to his community, it hasn’t erased the poverty and hopelessness there.

As Thami labors to support his family, his friend Johan (Antony Hagopian), a hard-edged local diver and handyman, schemes to make the two rich, or at least solvent. His grand plan: To purchase rights to an abandoned diamond mine for whatever gems might be left.

But to do that, the pair needs more cash than they can cobble together from Thami’s modest job or Johan’s perilous (and apparently futile) efforts to scavenge diamonds from the seafloor. Enter Mr. Smith (Ned Schmidtke), an affluent ex-banker who has drifted into town. He’s at loose ends after an enforced retirement that he ascribes to “affirmative action” in this country now governed largely by the black majority.

When Smith balks at the pair’s clumsy proposal, scoffing that the government is playing them for saps, Johan turns menacing, his rage and disdain flashing like the blade of the knife he brandishes. Hagopian’s bristling portrayal, with its fleeting glimpses of the pain behind the fury, gives the show a gripping focal point, particularly as Johan’s troubling past as a cop is revealed.

Odera (a UCSD graduate) is likewise compelling as the man caught in the middle; his Thami struggles to reconcile a seemingly long-learned impulse to be deferential with a deep pride and an iron determination to provide for his family. (Odera’s performance is all the more impressive because he was a last-minute replacement for the role.)

Smith represents everything the other two hope for and all they hate; Schmidtke inhabits this complex role with subtleties of voice and gesture that hint at an ambivalence over his life of privilege.

The production’s spare, almost airless feel is sabotaged slightly by a few too-pushy crescendos in Lindsay Jones’ sound design, which is otherwise dominated by the ominous knell of an offshore buoy bell. (The play takes its name from T.S. Eliot’s maritime meditation “The Dry Salvages.”)